The national emblem of India is "Ashoka Ki Lat" and it has been adopted from the upper part of Ashoka's lion like pillar.
An emblem by definition is “a heraldic device or symbolic object as a distinctive badge of a nation, organization, or family”. The national emblem of a country is a seal that is reserved for official use by the state. For a country, the national emblem is a symbol of authority and represents the basis of its constitutional philosophy.
The national emblem of India is an adaptation of the Lion Capital atop the Ashoka Pillar of Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, and is combined with the National Motto Satyameva Jayate. The Lion Capital was adopted as the National Emblem of India on January 26, 1950. It was a declaration of the newly acquired Republic status of India. The National Emblem is used for official purposes only and demands sincere respect from the citizens of India. It acts as the official seal for all national and state government offices and is the compulsory part of any letterhead used by the government. It features prominently on all currency notes as well as on diplomatic identification documents like the passports issued by the Republic of India. The national Emblem is the symbol of sovereignty for India.
Description
The National Emblem is the graphic representation of the Lion Capital that originally graced the top of the Ashok Stambh or Ashoka Pillar at Sarnath, along with the National Motto written below it. The Lion Capital crowning the Ashok Pillar is carved out of a single block of yellow sand stone and features four Asiatic Lions sitting back to back, but the two dimensional representation of National Emblem depicts only 3, the fourth lion is hidden from view. The four lions stand on a short cylindrical base that has four Ashok Chakras corresponding to each lion bust and reliefs of four more animals in between them – the lion, the bull, the elephant and the galloping horse. In the 2D form of the National Emblem, only one Ashok Chakra is visible in the front with the galloping horse on the left and the bull on the right of it.The Ashok Chakra is actually a form of the Buddhist Dharma Chakra. The actual Lion Capital sits on an inverted lotus abacus which has not been included in the National Emblem representation. Instead, below the representation of the Lion Capital, the words Satyameva Jayate is written in Devnagari Script, which is also the National Motto of India. The words are a quote from Mundaka Upanishad, the last and most philosophical of the four Vedas and is translated as ‘Truth alone triumphs’.